Do Elites Discriminate Against White Christians?

Pat Buchanan thinks American elites discriminate against white
Christians. At least, he thought so in 2000, when he "accused
Harvard--and, by extension, the entire American elite" of the practice,
according to The New York Times' Ross Douthat. Douthat brings it up
because he sees the same argument on Glenn Beck's and Rush
Limbaugh's shows and in the "backlash" against Sonia Sotomayor's "wise
Latina" remark. He also thinks it might be
partly true that American elites are favoring certain groups over others, with American colleges in particular are perpetuating the trend. Now
he's got a debate on his hands: are American elites really biased against white Christians?

The Real Minorities Douthat says
that "noxious and ridiculous" as Buchanan's complaints might be to
liberals, "to understand the country's opresent polarization, it's
worth recognizing what [he] got right." For starters, it appears that,
due partly to affirmative action, "the most underrepresented groups on
elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they're working-class
whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states
and regions." Then those working-class whites become underrepresented
in "law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the
arts." It becomes a problem for society, "breed[ing] paranoia, among
elite and non-elites alike."

White Christians Are the Focus, Rather Than the Poor? The American Prospect's Adam Serwer
marvels at how Douthat can see "working-class whites" underrepresented
and focus on their whiteness and Christianity rather than their class.
It sounds like, Serwer argues, the real problem with college admissions
is not affirmative action but "the implicit size of the pie retained by
the wealthy." In other words, "Douthat's implicit conclusion isn't
really that we should expand the share of the pie at elite institutions
to the underrepresented as a whole; it's to wave his foam finger for
one group of underrepresented people over another."

Newsflash:
Elites Are Often, Themselves, White Christians "What discrimination
exists comes down to a question of class, not culture," concurs Tim Fernholz
with his American Prospect colleague. He's thus not too impressed with
Douthat's column, which he decides is essentially "offering a
mealymouthed support for a kind of soft affirmative action for, well,
he doesn't quite say white Christians ... but for those whom he
believes are culturally affiliated with white Christians."

Hang On: There's a Good Point Here, counters progressive Matt Yglesias.
Simply put, it's this: "while liberals are eager to draw attention to
the idea of a given institution having insufficient black
representation, nobody speaks up for the poor underrepresented white
Christians." Fernholz doesn't manage to "refute" this, Yglesias notes.
That said, he notes that Buchanan's original speech was more focused on
the high numbers of Jews and Asians at elite institutions, rather than
blacks--he was "at best making fun of liberals and at worst engaging in
his signature anti-semitism."

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